What Did Ancient Humans Do When They Got Sick?

Thirty-one thousand years ago, in a cave in Borneo, a child's lower leg was cut off with stone tools, and the child lived for years. So what did our ancestors actually do when they got sick or hurt, with no doctors, no hospitals and no painkillers? The bones, the teeth and even the dental plaque they left behind give a surprisingly detailed answer. In this video, we discuss: The Body's Own First-Aid Kit: Benjamin Hart's 1988 argument that feeling tired, hungry for nothing and wanting to be alone is a survival strategy, Matthew Kluger's 1975 fever experiment with desert iguanas, Michael Huffman's sick chimpanzee chewing bitter Vernonia, and Rakus, the orangutan who treated his own face wound in 2022. The Neanderthal Medicine Cabinet: What Karen Hardy's team (2012) and Laura Weyrich's team (2017) found locked inside Neanderthal dental calculus from El Sidrón in Spain: chamomile, yarrow, poplar and Penicillium mold. Someone Stayed: Shanidar 1, the Neanderthal who survived a crushed skull, a lost forearm and near-deafness for years, and the young man at Man Bac in Vietnam who lived about a decade after he was paralysed. Stone Age Surgery: The 31,000-year-old amputation at Liang Tebo, a 14,000-year-old cavity scraped out with flint in the Italian Alps, drilled molars at Mehrgarh, and why skull surgery in the ancient Andes compared well with the American Civil War. Ötzi's Medicine Kit: The Iceman's 61 tattoos over his worn joints, and the birch fungus he carried on a leather strap while his gut was full of whipworm. What It Means For You: Why rest is part of the treatment, where your medicine cabinet really came from, and the oldest medicine humans have. This video is for curiosity and education, not medical advice. Sources: Maloney, T. R., Dilkes-Hall, I. E., Vlok, M., et al. (2022). "Surgical amputation of a limb 31,000 years ago in Borneo." Nature, 609, 547-551. Hart, B. L. (1988). "Biological basis of the behavior of sick animals." Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 12(2), 123-137. Kluger, M. J., Ringler, D. H., & Anver, M. R. (1975). "Fever and survival." Science, 188(4184), 166-168. Huffman, M. A., & Seifu, M. (1989). "Observations on the illness and consumption of a possibly medicinal plant Vernonia amygdalina (Del.), by a wild chimpanzee in the Mahale Mountains National Park, Tanzania." Primates, 30(1), 51-63. Laumer, I. B., Rahman, A., Rahmaeti, T., et al. (2024). "Active self-treatment of a facial wound with a biologically active plant by a male Sumatran orangutan." Scientific Reports, 14, 8932. Hardy, K., Buckley, S., Collins, M. J., et al. (2012). "Neanderthal medics? Evidence for food, cooking, and medicinal plants entrapped in dental calculus." Naturwissenschaften, 99(8), 617-626. Weyrich, L. S., Duchene, S., Soubrier, J., et al. (2017). "Neanderthal behaviour, diet, and disease inferred from ancient DNA in dental calculus." Nature, 544, 357-361. Solecki, R. S. (1971). Shanidar: The First Flower People. New York: Knopf. Trinkaus, E., & Villotte, S. (2017). "External auditory exostoses and hearing loss in the Shanidar 1 Neandertal." PLoS ONE, 12(10), e0186684. Oxenham, M. F., Tilley, L., Matsumura, H., et al. (2009). "Paralysis and severe disability requiring intensive care in Neolithic Asia." Anthropological Science, 117(2), 107-112. Oxilia, G., Peresani, M., Romandini, M., et al. (2015). "Earliest evidence of dental caries manipulation in the Late Upper Palaeolithic." Scientific Reports, 5, 12150. Coppa, A., Bondioli, L., Cucina, A., et al. (2006). "Early Neolithic tradition of dentistry." Nature, 440, 755-756. Kushner, D. S., Verano, J. W., & Titelbaum, A. R. (2018). "Trepanation procedures/outcomes: Comparison of prehistoric Peru with other ancient, medieval, and American Civil War cranial surgery." World Neurosurgery, 114, 245-251. Samadelli, M., Melis, M., Miccoli, M., Vigl, E. E., & Zink, A. R. (2015). "Complete mapping of the tattoos of the 5300-year-old Tyrolean Iceman." Journal of Cultural Heritage, 16(5), 753-758. Dorfer, L., Moser, M., Bahr, F., et al. (1999). "A medical report from the stone age?" The Lancet, 354(9183), 1023-1025. Capasso, L. (1998). "5300 years ago, the Ice Man used natural laxatives and antibiotics." The Lancet, 352(9143), 1864. Hobbes, T. (1651). Leviathan. #history #evolution #medicine